This paper indicates that the extent of collective bargaining coverage in an industry may depend on the differences in firms productivity levels within the industry. Less pronounced differences in productivity levels make it easier to design collective wage contracts that are accepted by a wider...

Union membership in the United States displayed a ∩-shaped pattern over the 20th century, while income inequality sketched a ∪. A model of unions is developed to analyze these facts. There is a distribution of productivity across firms in the economy. Firms hire capital, plus skilled and...

How does an increase in unionization costs, i.e. costs which arise when workers are organized by a union, affect the productivity distribution of active firms, wage inequality and welfare? In this paper, we build a model with costly, endogenous unionization, heterogeneous firms as well as free...

Shop stewards are crucial to the vitality of unions, yet our understanding of why workers take on this important role is incomplete. This qualitative study seeks to contribute to addressing this gap by exploring the factors that influenced workers to become shop stewards in three dissimilar...

The Australian Labor government's recognition of collective bargaining under its Fair Work Act 2009, and its efficiency drive from late 2011 across the Australian Public Service (APS), presented the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) with an opportunity to explore means of union renewal...

Highly formalized models of union behaviour have been developed and are widely used within neo-classical economics. This approach is justified by the argument that most goals pursued by unions can be reduced to a wage (or wage-equivalent) - employment trade-off. However, the strong assumptions...

This article considers the state of unionism today and argues that in strategizing for more workers’ power and effective worker representation, unions have – unsurprisingly – focussed upon the primary domain that workers occupy: the labour market and workplaces, applying a particular...

Australian unionism built upon strong foundations transported from Britain. Subsequently it grew beyond this base inscope and form. By 1890 the level of unionisation of the colonial workforce exceeded that in the mother country. This was mainly due to the upsurge of new unionism in the late...

In the 1990s, due to the events in Brazilian economy, workers' unions faced a significant crisis. The union's bases contracted and, at the same time, became more rarefied. However, in 2000, despite the good shape of the economy (at least in its macro context), workers' affiliation to the unions...